payment page
Degree being vizarded,
Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order.
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
. . . like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of Earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. (1.3.87–107)
This lengthy quote comes from Ulysses’s justly famous speech on “degree.” He makes this speech during the meeting of Greek military leaders, where they attempt to understand why their army has failed to make headway against the Trojans. After listening to Agamemnon and Nestor try to arouse enthusiasm by citing various examples of heroism, Ulysses politely cuts in to offer a bit of more substantive insight. He hypothesizes that the Greeks have failed to overcome the Trojans because the military chain of command is no longer respected. Without a clearly structured and functioning hierarchy in place, things fall apart. To illustrate his point, Ulysses conjures an image of cosmic harmony. He notes that that the sun (i.e., Sol) is the great “king” who exercises unchecked “commandment” over the planets. At least, his power should be “sans check.” When the planets decide to go rogue and “wander” from their paths, chaos reigns. Ulysses depicts this chaos in terms of “raging of the sea” and the “shaking of Earth.”
Though presented as an abstract and universal idea about the need to maintain “degree,” Ulysses seems mainly concerned about Achilles, whose pride has led him to stray from the collective effort. His preoccupation with Achilles’s individualism soon becomes clear when he formulates a plan to manipulate Achilles into rejoining the fight. Interestingly, in making and enacting this plan, Ulysses effectively ignores his own advice on the importance of degree. Instead of insisting that Agamemnon assert his authority or else punish Achilles for falling out of line, Ulysses decides to go rogue. Conspiring with Nestor, he rigs a lottery to ensure that Ajax will be chosen to fight Hector in single combat, which they hope will infuriate Achilles and inflame his desire to prove his superior worth on the battlefield. Ulysses’s departure from standard chain of command demonstrates that his famous speech merely gives voice to a general idea. When it comes down to it, he proves just as capable of Achilles of channeling his pride into individualized action. Other major “heroes” in the play will turn out to be similarly self-contradicting.
Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled elders,
Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,
Add to my clamors. Let us pay betimes
A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
Cry, Trojans, cry! Practice your eyes with tears.
Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilium stand.
Our firebrand brother Paris burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen and a woe!
Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go. (2.2.111–18)
During the scene where the Trojan leaders have convened to discuss whether to return Helen to the Greeks, Cassandra interrupts the discussion to relay her dark vision of Troy’s future. Cassandra is the only daughter of Priam, the king of Troy, and to anyone familiar with the legend of the Trojan War, she is well known as a prophetess who correctly foresees the fall of Troy. Yet the men around her dismiss her vision of Troy in flames as the ravings of a lunatic, and they proceed apace with their strategy meeting. Interestingly, Hector shares Cassandra’s view that Helen should be sent back to the Greeks. However, over the course of the scene, he will be persuaded by Troilus that Helen is worth the cost of life that Troy will have to pay. Thus, they ultimately ignore Cassandra’s chilling evocation of impending disaster. Meanwhile, we in the audience feel the ominous force of her words, knowing as we do that the scene we are watching unfold marks a point of no return for the Trojans.
Though Cassandra has correctly predicted Troy’s fate, Troilus and Cressida doesn’t end with the city’s fall. Even so, her unheeded prophecy is significant for the play as a whole, since it invites the audience to use it as a lens for other instances where characters seem obstinately blind to their own fates. The prominent literary critic Marjorie Garber notes that Shakespeare often allows tragic characters an early and clear vision of their own futures. This is particularly true, she observes, with plays featuring well-known characters from history and legend. But this isn’t quite the case in Troilus and Cressida. Consider the two title characters. Both make a firm pledge of fidelity to their beloved, but neither has a strong or clear intuition about the truth of their words. Troilus does entertain some vague worries that things won’t work out, but he will indeed prove “as true as Troilus” (3.2.183). Likewise, Cressida worries that she may be making a vow she can’t fulfill, but she has no idea how right she is when she utters the words, “As false as Cressid” (3.2.198). Taking these examples together, it becomes possible to read Troilus and Cressida as a play about people who lack the self-awareness to foresee their fates.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion like a rusty mail
In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way,
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast. Keep, then, the path,
For Emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue. (3.3.150–62)
These lines come from Ulysses’s second great speech in the play, where he discusses how the inevitable passage of time makes fame fragile. He addresses this speech to Achilles, who’s feeling upset after the Greek military leadership passed him by without bothering to acknowledge him. What he doesn’t know is that Ulysses orchestrated this collective cold shoulder, instructing his fellow leaders to spurn Achilles so that the hero would grow jealous of the favor shown to Ajax. The plan worked: Achilles became upset and approached Ulysses to figure out what was going on. It’s at this point that Ulysses launches into his formal discourse of time and reputation. In characteristically lofty terms, Ulysses imagines a ravenous monster that follows Time and “devour[s]” all the “scraps [of] good deeds past” that fall by the wayside in the unceasing forward march. He says the secret to staying relevant and maintaining a reputation as a hero is “perseverance.” However, as Ulysses quickly adds, it isn’t just about not falling behind; it’s about working to stay ahead. In other words, fame can only be gained by staying ahead of the curve—not by picking up the scraps left by others, but by forging the path ahead oneself.
As with Ulysses’s previous speech on degree, the context in which he delivers this one makes the audience suspicious that he really means what he says. Rather, his discourse on fame seems strategically attuned to the moment, which he has carefully orchestrated to provoke Achilles’s anxiety. Although this passage has often been quoted separate from the play, as though it’s an earnestly high-minded expression, the words essentially have a devious function that give them a cynical quality in context. Ulysses arguably isn’t concerned with fame or honor. Instead, he’s concerned with winning the war, which he aims to achieve through the underhanded means of psychological manipulation. Yet Ulysses’s speech resonates on another level in this play where fame and honor so consistently fail to live up to their own ideal images. Most of the characters in Shakespeare’s drama are well known because their legendary exploits have been celebrated in Homer’s great epic, the Iliad. From this perspective, the fame of Achilles, Ulysses, and the rest has already been established for all time. This fact would seem to contradict Ulysses’s discourse on fame’s fleetingness. Alternatively, we might read his speech as an invitation to question Homer’s celebration of these heroes’ eternal valor.
This she? No, this is Diomed’s Cressida.
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods’ delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bifold authority, where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt. This is and is not Cressid. (5.2.166–75)
Troilus speaks these words after witnessing his beloved Cressida break her vow of fidelity. Ulysses, having been suspicious of Cressida’s faithfulness from the moment she appeared in the Greek camp, has led Troilus to Calchas’s tent under cover of night. There, in the shadows just outside the tent, they look on as Cressida gives Diomedes Troilus’s love token (i.e., the sleeve) and submits herself to him. Troilus’s words here express a profound sense of shock and denial. Three times in this brief passage he questions what he has just witnessed. Each time he concludes that the Cressida who has betrayed him is somehow not Cressida. Initially, he says that “this is Diomed’s Cressida,” as if tacitly acknowledging that Diomedes has won her, and that Cressida no longer belongs to him. But his subsequent mantra, “This is not she,” indicates a powerful form of denial that refuses to believe that this is any version of Cressida. This moment marks the climax of the play’s romantic narrative. It’s an event that, though traumatic for Troilus, isn’t quite tragic in the conventional sense, since it doesn’t lead ineluctably to his death.
Aside from marking a turning point for Troilus (as well as the moment when Cressida figuratively and literally disappears from the play), this passage is significant for its language about language. “O madness of discourse,” Troilus laments: “That cause sets up with and against itself!” This utterance has two distinct layers of meaning. Most immediately, it points to the way Troilus’s equivocal language of she and not she confounds reason. Without a language that can give order to experience, chaos ensues—an idea that recalls Ulysses’s earlier speech about the importance of “degree.” The failure of Troilus’s own language mirrors the failure of Cressida’s “vow” to maintain its own sanctity. If this is in fact Cressida, and if she has indeed broken her vow, then “there be [no] rule in unity itself” and the very order of the cosmos is threatened. On another level, Troilus’s words have a metatheatrical meaning that slyly draws attention to the fact that the Cressida we see on stage is a character in a play, performed by an actor. Thus, the woman he’s watching both is and isn’t Cressida. In this case, reality itself is subject to a “bifold authority,” the instability of which betokens collapse.
Strike, fellows, strike! This is the man I seek.
[The Myrmidons kill Hector.]
So, Ilium, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down!
Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.
On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain
“Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.” (5.9.10–14)
This passage marks the climax of the play’s action, when Achilles, back on the battlefield at long last, slays Hector and wins a decisive victory for the Greeks. At least, that is how conventional retellings of the Trojan War frame this moment. Shakespeare’s take on Achilles’s defeat of Hector proves rather dark and morally questionable. In Homer’s account of this event in the Iliad, Achilles meets Hector on the battlefield and kills him in one-on-one combat, piercing the great Trojan in the neck with his spear. Shakespeare’s account diverges from Homer significantly. Although Achilles and Hector do meet and engage in single combat, their fight isn’t decisive. Achilles complains that his time away from battle has left him out of shape, and he runs away to recover his strength. But instead of returning to resume their one-on-one battle, Achilles assembles a gang of mercenaries known as Myrmidons, and they converge on Hector together. At this point, near the end of the day and just before the trumpets of retreat ring out, Achilles and his gang surround Hector and, though he is unarmed, kill him.
In ancient warfare, it was considered deeply dishonorable to kill an unarmed opponent. Only through a fair fight could honor and fame be legitimately won. With this in mind, it’s fair to say that Achilles didn’t defeat Hector so much as murder him in cold blood. Curiously, though, Shakespeare’s stage direction is ambiguous about who actually deals Hector the death blow. He simply writes, “The Myrmidons kill Hector,” leaving it open to interpretation as to whether Achilles takes any direct role in the killing. But regardless of how this event might be staged, there’s something distinctly untruthful about the Greek’s victorious cry, “Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.” The reprehensible conditions of Hector’s death render this supposedly climactic moment pathetically anticlimactic. Furthermore, the unfulfilling conclusion to the Achilles–Hector arc mirrors the unsatisfying conclusion to Troilus’s story. Not only does he fail to avenge himself against Diomedes, but the Greek manages to steal Troilus’s horse and make himself “[Cressida’s] knight by proof” (5.5.5). Ultimately, then, what should be the play’s dramatic apex turns out to be its pitiful nadir.
